Behind the Curtain
by mdime
Summary: Ainsley makes a decision...


**Title: **Behind the Curtain, or, The Elephant or the Donkey?****

**Rating: **PG****

**Category:** general****

**Spoilers:** ummm...whatever Ainsley's been in, I guess.****

**Summary:** Ainsley makes a decision.****

**Archive:** ask (http://www.angelfire.com/pa5/mdime02/)****

**Disclaimer: **alas, no.  Wishes don't count, do they?****

**Author's Note:** There is a delightful short story called "The Lady or the Tiger" which I remember reading in high school...it inspired me to be much more devious than I had originally planned (if you know the story, you understand; if not, http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/Ubooks/LadyTige.shtml has the text of the story...read it when you're done with this!)  Enjoy!

**Oh!  And by the way:** Just because she's off to investigate crimes in Miami doesn't mean she can't still exist in the West Wing universe...at least according to me.

            She wished the line was shorter.  If it was shorter, then she could get this over with, go back to work, and attempt to ignore the nervous energy of the city around her.

            Her own nervousness was impossible to ignore.

            She had never liked waiting – it would be better to skip ahead, to find out immediately whether or not they had won.  The problem, this time, was that she wasn't entirely sure which "they" she belonged to or what outcome meant "winning."

            It should have been easy.

            It wasn't.

            Perhaps she wished the line were longer.  Long enough for her to decide who she was, who "they" were, and whether she wanted the bigger part of herself to win or to lose.

            She was hungry.

            She tried to remember the last time she ate, and was surprised that she could not be certain if the meal she recalled had in fact been eaten today, or the day before.  She knew that there must have been scattered snacks in between – after all, even residents of the west wing recognized from time to time that they could not run on caffeine and adrenaline alone.  Usually the food was forced upon them by another person, but it was food and it was eventually eaten, whether it be while poring over reports and polling numbers or walking through the hallways on the way to another of an endless string of meetings.

            Work in the White House was always fast-paced, but she had never seen anything like this before.  It thrilled her, and it scared her.

            Thrilling because she was watching it, was a part of it, had forgotten the very idea of a nine-to-five job and didn't care.  A national campaign is an almost surreal experience.  A national campaign from the vantage point of the West Wing of the White House was...indescribable.

            It still surprised her, sometimes, to realize that her place of work was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  That she was council to the President of the United States.  That the people who ran the country listened to her ideas.  That they asked for her advice or her opinion.  That she helped them.  That they were her friends.

            They weren't supposed to be, not really, and that was part of what scared her.  She came to serve the office, not the man.  These people represented everything that she had always fought against.  She was a Republican.  They were Democrats.  It used to be that simple.

            But now...she was somewhat lost in the language of "us" versus "them."  At work, them was the Republicans.  She prepared strategies and legal briefs, deflected criticism, voiced whatever she was told to.  All for the good of the White House.  The Democratic White House.  And she did it, because that was her job, it was her duty and her privilege – regardless of whether or not she agreed, and more often than not she didn't.

            Oh, it was easy enough to defend Josiah Bartlet, because despite his faults he was a good and honorable man: intelligent, compassionate, loving, perceptive.  Defending the President, at least in public, was just as simple.  Her private misgivings were irrelevant to the performance of her job, but they came home with her each night.  Sometimes she changed their position, and sometimes they changed her own.  Sometimes she disagreed entirely.  But in her apartment, or when debating with friends, or when listening to the little voice she ignored at work, "them" was the Democrats.

            She found that sometimes she could distinguish between the people and the positions, her friends and their Party, and was left to wonder whether anyone else could.  Washington was fiercely partisan, and she used to love that.  She wrote articles denouncing Leo McGarry and declaring him unfit and irresponsible – and he called her to serve at the pleasure of the President.

            She despises most of their ideals, but she calls them friends.  She understands them sometimes, and at others she can only shake her head.  She isn't one of them.  At least, not always...though recently she has begun to wonder if she is keeping them out instead of them not letting her in.

            They have given her a level of acceptance that she never imagined, and she questions her surprise rather than their openness.  Of course, it isn't perfect; nothing ever is.  They are still skeptical, and they have their reasons.  They criticize her friends or the people she admires – sometimes harshly – but she can understand that, too, since she has done the same in return.  They come to her sometimes simply because she is "the Republican", even though they know that not everyone shares the same opinions, and she helps without reminding them of that because so often she is just Ainsley. 

            But none of this helps her, at least not in the way it should.

            She is holding her registration card in her hands, and it tells her that she is a Republican.  It isn't just a designation though, because she truly believes it.  She always has, and she does now.  

            She has participated in every election since her eighteenth birthday, and she never questioned – not even for a second – which lever she should pull.  She has to tell herself now that voting for someone, a person whose policy is absurd and whose domestic agenda makes her cringe, just because she works for him is not a good enough reason.  She has to tell herself this because briefly she thought it was.  She was distracted, disoriented by the fact that if Ritchie wins she loses Leo and Toby and CJ and Sam and Josh.  She loses Oliver and her friends in the council's office.  She loses the junior staffers and the assistants and aides: Ed and Larry, Donna, Margaret, Charlie.  She loses Abbey, the single most astonishing woman she has ever known.  She loses Josiah Bartlet.

            But of course it is absurd to break with her ideals simply because she doesn't want to see her coworkers packing their offices and disappearing from her life.

            They all want her candidate to lose, and there are times when she does too.  Then she believes she comes to her senses, and laughs at the thought of actually wishing for four more years of a Democratic White House.  Later, her thoughts mingle the two together – President Bartlet, President Ritchie – and she becomes confused once more.  In the end she wants to cry, because up should be up and down should be down, or else up should be down and down up.  If that were true, she could at least reason with herself.

            Instead she sees things sideways, and they aren't black or white or even gray, but technicolor.

            The analogy alone is confusing, the actual issue impossible.  If she votes for Ritchie and Ritchie wins, she will lose what she knows as the White House but gain the chance at real change, the kind of change she believes is best for the progress of the country she has served above all partisanship.  If she votes for Ritchie and Ritchie loses, she will know that her voice was heard but ultimately will be ignored or pacified by compromises while the power rests with politicians she has been taught to mistrust and friends she has taught herself to love.

            If she votes for Bartlet...

            The winning or losing might be irrelevant.

            If she votes for Bartlet, she would be doing so solely because she believes that he can fulfill the duties and obligations of the presidency.  Because she believes that in the critical moment of decision, he will make the right one.  The just one, the best one.  The true one.

            Did she believe that?  Could she believe that?

            She trusted the President but she trusted in Ritchie's abilities as well, and he had the added benefit of representing her values...which left her nowhere.

            It was her turn.

            She walked into the booth without hesitation, pulled the curtain around her.  She took a deep breath, calm and assured, and stared at the levers.  She faltered.

            Everyone expected her to vote for Ritchie; she expected it of herself.  No one would believe that she had doubts, that she was standing in a voting booth hoping for some sort of divine intervention to point the way.  They would never know, either.  No one would know one way or the other.

            Bartlet would win, or Bartlet would lose.  The White House would either remain as it was or shift allegiance to Ritchie and the Republican party.

            She had been taught by her father that every vote counts.  She believes it in her heart, and she knows that her coworkers do, too.  Every vote counts, but only the voter knows in which way it does so.

            She is a citizen of the United States, an employee of the White House, a member of the Republican party – slightly tattered by both sides' skepticism of her loyalties, divided by her conflicting desires and knowledge that she can't have it both ways, undecided in her vote.

            She stared at two levers, and suddenly discovered that it all makes sense.

            She rested her hand on one lever for a moment, then the other, then dropped her hand to her side.

            She was going to vote.

            She pulled a lever, pushed the curtain aside, and left without a backward glance.

            She smiled slightly to herself, secure in the knowledge that on the other side of the curtain, no one knows who you pick.


End file.
